Abstract
The girder of self-anchored suspension bridge is subjected to large compression force applied by main cables. So, serious damage of the girder due to breakage of hangers may cause the collapse of the whole bridge. With the time increasing, the hangers may break suddenly for their resistance capacities decrease due to corrosion. Using nonlinear static and dynamic analysis methods and adopting 3D finite element model, the responses of an actual self-anchored suspension bridge to sudden breakage of hangers are studied in this paper. The results show that the sudden breakage of a hanger causes violent vibration and large changes in internal forces of the bridge. In the process of the vibration, the maximum tension of hanger produced by breakage of a hanger exceeds 2.22 times its initial value, and the reaction forces of the bearings increase by more than 1.86 times the tension of the broken hanger. Based on the actual bridge, the influences of some factors including flexural stiffness of girder, torsion stiffness of girder, flexural stiffness of main cable, weight of girder, weight of main cable, span to sag ratio of main cable, distance of hangers, span length, and breakage time of hanger on the dynamic responses are studied in detail, and the influencing extent of the factors is presented.
Highlights
Large-span bridges, including cable-stayed bridge, suspension bridge, and arch bridge, need cables to be the stay cables, main cables, or hangers
In order to find out the relationship between the responses caused by breakage of hanger and the structure, based on the bridge analyzed above, breakage of the left hanger H0 at the position of 1/4 of mid-span, as shown in Figure 11, is taken as an example to study the influences of flexural stiffness of girder, torsion stiffness of girder, flexural stiffness of main cable, weight of girder, weight of main cable, span to sag ratio of main cable, distance of hangers, span length, and breakage time of hanger on the dynamic responses
When the span length of the bridge remains unchanged, the effects of span to sag ratio of main cable on the dynamic responses caused by sudden breakage of hanger H0 are studied
Summary
Large-span bridges, including cable-stayed bridge, suspension bridge, and arch bridge, need cables to be the stay cables, main cables, or hangers. Serious corrosion and breakage of cables occurred in many bridges [1]. Considering the geometric and material nonlinearity, Cai et al [11] studied the nonlinear responses and progressive collapses of cable-stayed bridge due to sudden breakage of stays. Considering the geometric and material nonlinearity, Qiu et al [14] and Kao et al [15] studied the static load-bearing capacity of self-anchored suspension bridge. More than 20 self-anchored suspension bridges have been built in China [16] Their hangers are all made of parallel high strength galvanized steel wires. Using nonlinear static and dynamic analysis methods, the responses of a self-anchored suspension bridge due to the breakage of hangers are studied in this paper. The results can be used for reference in design and maintenance of this kind of bridge
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